Ship differentiation

It would be nice to see a greater differentiation in the ships available. For instance, by the time you get a few sectors in the Stealth ship really isn't that different than most of the other ships, as it can have the same systems, weapons and augs. The only "special" thing it has is the hull armor mod.

So instead maybe it should get a bonus to cloaking, so either a aug that lowers the cloak cooldown, or even better a extra power bar in cloaking that extends cloaking duration. Maybe it could even have the passive of firing while cloaked (not a aug per se). To offset this it can only have two shield bars.

Or how about the federation ship? From what I can tell in playing with it it really isn't much different than the kestrel, so maybe to make it feel like the epic ship it should (it is the hardest one to get) give it a extra two power to weapons, or a passive bonus to weapon charging for instance...

I'm not just arguing with you, I want you to know that the way things play out I really do feel the difference with different ships.

The three weapon slots on the donut really affect me, as does the funny room layout. I find it difficult to defend those ships because they are hard to dump air from without endangering the two core systems that you need to repair the ship (doors and o2)

It's also very easy for the enemy to make a short path to your guns or shields...

I do applaud the topic. This is exactly what I was hoping people would do. Come in and just give ideas - even better without huge writeups in painful detail.

I'll put some skin in the game here and throw some ideas out.

rather than quantitative differences, I'd rather see qualitative ones. a bonus here, a penalty there. moving the numbers around doesn't make the game more fun.

the stealth ship is a good example of something that is really amusing and different.

This is the exact same thing I was thinking about! Just like the crewmen have special traits, the ships should also have some more background to them- the layout of the rooms is not enough. Different number of weapon/drone slots is a good start but I really feel that additional "perk" is missing from each ship.

E.g more power to those featured system - weapons for the federation one, drones for engi one, Cloak for the stealth ship. I've not unlocked the mantis one yet but imange it could have the crew teleporter in a four-square room!

But this can be taken even further as this need not to be only bonuses - you can trade off with reduction in engine power, shield power etc.

From what I've noticed when playing with the stealth ship, it does effectively have the 'Stealth Weapons' augmentation as standard. Which is the really stand out thing about it for me, having that with no physical aug slot taken allows to keep the awesome hull armour and still make the ship I want, provided I find the right parts... Which is rare xD

The stealth ship does not have any hidden, secret bonus. If it does, it's a bug, but that would be a very coincidental and interesting bug for it to have:)

We've been planning on using the augmentation slots to give every player ship a unique ability that no other ship has access to. The use of the physical slot both makes it obvious that the ships have these powers, and intentionally helps to balance things to prevent any ship from being naturally over powered with it's +1 augment.

I get that you don't want ships to be overpowered or to get unseen bonuses, but all you have to do is state in the hanger what bonuses a ship gets (flavor text) and balance it out with weaknesses. I see a stealth ship as having a cloaking bonus that other ships can't achieve. So a bonus to cloaking power, cloak cooldown and getting the fire while cloaked aug at the start would be sweet. Balance it by only allowing two shield bubbles. That seems like a fair tradeoff.

The kestrel could be neutral and not get anything special. I like Barto's idea of the mantis ship having a 2x2 transporter pad. That could be fun.

The torus could get a bonus to shield cooldown to highlight the engi's natural mechanical inclination, maybe a passive drone fire rate increase. To balance they only can get 6 weapon power...

I really love this game, but I've unlocked most of the ships and to be honest I feel that they are lack luster. Sure it is cool to have something a little different, but they aren't that different except at the beginning. They really should be unique.

Ah so it appears I may have found a bug... I haven't played a huge amount with the stealth ship, I'll play a few more round with it now and see if it is or maybe I've just been expecting that to be the case and so seeing it as such.

Also, I don't see why some ships shouldn't be more powerful in certain areas. For instance the federation ship is hard to unlock, so why shouldn't it be a bit more powerful? Something to look forward to? Give it two extra weapon power so we can fully utilize its 4 weapon slots.

I'm somewhat baffled by everyone saying the federation cruiser is the hardest ship to unlock. I unlocked that ship awhile ago, and have yet to unlock either the Mantis or stealth ships. I'm having a hard time even finding the relevant encounters. At least you're guaranteed to encounter the boss (if you make it that far...).

More on topic, I do like the idea of more differentiation between ships. Although, I'd say there is a fair amount to start; each ship starts with its own strengths and weaknesses at the start, and I tend to build around those, rather than always trying to force the same playstyle.

Thinking about this some more I have a few more thoughts to add. FTL is made in the vein of rougelikes. What make rougelikes so much fun? I would say the random sweet loot, multiple class/races/skills to try, the random level generation and the high difficulty (but also high reward). You also will feel like you have made a lot of progress once you get to the end of the game, and your character will feel powerful even though you can still be beat.

So how does FTL measure up to that? Well it doesn't have random loot, which makes sense given the shortness of the game and the balancing needed. There are multiple ships, but they don't play that differently, at least not compared to the difference between a wizard, a warrior and a rogue...

FTL also has the random levels and the high difficulty. So it measures up pretty well, but I feel like it is missing the diversity on the player end. The ships are very similar and in the end most of my ships end up looking pretty similar. A cloak is a must have, at least three shields is essential (unless you maybe want to try evasion instead?), then you can choose to try doing boarding, drones or weapons, or some combo.

I just think that the ships should have a distinct feel and play style and that they don't really have that now.

Just my thoughts. Don't want to seem too critical as the game is great and a lot of fun. I'm just trying to think of ways to make the game more interesting in the long run. The draw of playing rougelikes over and over is the breadth of choices available, whether that be new classes/races, sweet random loot, random level generation etc...

That's actually a really good point, it would be nice if the ships were more like playing different classes. Could be achieved with special abilities, or even just different caps in how far systems could be upgraded (some ships could have more weapons, others more shields, etc...). Would make the ships more distinct in the end game, rather than just being distinct from the initial loadout.

We're going to try our best to allow multiple builds to be viable but it's going to take some tuning: i.e. we're trying to make cloaking less of a necessity and more weapons that mesh well with a teleport based build.

We will try to add more variety by making to the ships playstyle, but it may never be like "rogue vs mage" amount of difference.

Either way, some of these changes will have to wait until we get all of the content we have planned/half-finished into the game.